an interesting look into the life of someone with bipolar, it was quite eye opening with experience, it was scattered, but overall interesting read ( )

I think the author says it best.

"It's taken me exactly two months to leave my husband, find a new playmate and move across the country to my brand-new life."

"I still haven't made the connection between my drinking and the maniacal swings of my mood. I don't see the chaos around me as moods. I see it as a chaotic life that I'm simply too weak to manage well. And, for that matter, I more than welcome the highs, and the fact that the alcohol makes them even higher. And the lows, the screaming fits that morph into deep despair and back up again, the terrifying flights of fantasy, the inability to control my impulses? That's all just me being my usual fucked up self. I think the alcohol is helping me to manage my life."

Eventually her life comes full circle to a place where she is more accepting of her condition and its ramifications. ( )

There is a strongly compulsive feel to Hornbacher's writing. It is vivid and fast paced. Much of the writing style captures the experience of mania, the speed of the prose, the sudden changes in direction. It is exciting to read and be caught up in the ride.

But as a memoir of her life up to her thirties, looking at the impact of her bipolar, it is fairly one dimensional. It is almost entirely descriptions of mania and depression, and towards the end of the book seven long descriptions of being hospitalised that all cover much the same ground. It doesn't matter after a while whether you read the chapter on being manic on a book tour, manic wandering the desert, manic in San Francisco, manic at a magazine or manic at university, it all tells you the same information - the experience of the symptoms, the initial productivity, then mania taking over, and eventually life becoming too chaotic to be functional.

As a memoir, it reminds me of "Wasted" which felt written by anorexia itself, gleefully describing just how much she's getting done, all the doctors shes outwitting, while still losing more and more weight; "Madness" could have been written by mania. Both give you snapshots from the inside, flashes of the experience, in visceral detail, but lack deeper personal reflection.

And what about the earlier diagnosis from Wasted? She mentions being diagnosed bipolar 2, she talks about the impact of starvation on mania, so did that first diagnosis just get lost in the chaos of being passed between so many doctors?

Overall, some good set pieces depicting mania, with brief moments of insight into the wider picture, but too repetitive, like a movie made entirely of montages. ( )

Brilliant and honest (often uncomfortably so), and for me a book that changed the way I look at bipolar disorder. One of my best friends had bipolar illness, and his self-medication led to cirrhosis and congestive heart failure in his early 40's and to his death in his early 50's. I thought I understood some of what was happening, but as I read this I had flashbacks to events 20 and 30 years ago that I could now see from a very different, and much more frightening, perspective. I realized I was still a little angry with this friend for what he did to himself, and for leaving us. This book made me work though that. I get what he was dealing with now, I understand his actions, and my heart breaks. I have two important people in my life now with bipolar diagnoses, neither with a case as serious as Hornbacher's or my late friend's, and I hope what I learned here makes me a better friend to them.

I can't recommend this enough. Just a great book. ( )

Picked this for bookclub. Quick read, but disturbing. We should have an interesting discussion about mental illness! Plan to read her previous book about eating disorders as well. ( )